New Prime Minister must show ambition for health and wellbeing, says Patients Association

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Patients Association calls on new Prime Minister to show ambition for health and wellbeing

With the arrival into office of a new Prime Minister and Government, we have taken the opportunity to reiterate our priority calls for health and care.

Rachel Power has written to both Boris Johnson and the incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, calling on them to show ambition for the nation’s health and wellbeing, and pursue a strategic approach that is co-ordinated across all areas of government that affect people’s wellbeing.

Her letter of congratulation to the Prime Minister on his appointment states: “The Patients Association believes that, as a nation, we should be ambitious for the health and wellbeing we achieve: we must seek to improve from the current position, not merely hold station. This means more than meeting some of the substantial health and care policy challenges: it means a sustained, strategic approach across the whole of government, aligning other relevant policy areas such as benefits and housing with health policy. In the first instance, I would like to suggest that judicious changes to central government, such as a Cabinet committee on health and wellbeing, might be considered to achieve this.”

The letter goes on to outline key priorities and challenges for the health and wellbeing agenda, including on NHS funding, the social care crisis, NHS performance levels, and Brexit.

On the latter, she concludes: “Brexit must be made to work for patients. Many people who voted for it did so in the expectation that it would not harm the NHS, and some in the expectation it would be actively beneficial. I understand that medical supplies are being given top priority in planning for any possible departure from the EU without a deal, which is welcome. […] Given the fundamentally high stakes involved for the lives of so many people, it is essential that Brexit is successful in delivering benefits for health and wellbeing.”

Rachel has also written to Matt Hancock, to congratulate him on his ongoing tenure as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and reiterate our key messages to him.

You can read the letters in full on our website:
Letter to the Prime Minister
Letter to the Chancellor
Letter to the Secretary of State

Image from Number Ten Flickr, under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND-2.0.

Complete our 2019 membership survey

The Patients Association has this week launched its 2019 membership survey, and we are inviting members to share their views.

We want to know how satisfied you are with how the NHS currently runs, and we want to learn more about the health and social care issues that matter the most to you. We also want to know how we can better represent you, and to find out more about your membership preferences.

This is your opportunity to share your opinions and ideas about how we can continue to strengthen the Patients Association and improve the value of our membership, so please do complete the short survey here. The information you provide will help us better understand patients' concerns and will enable us to build on our work towards improving patient experience. All responses will be completely private and confidential.

Please note: as this newsletter is available to everyone, including members and non-members of the Patients Association, we would like to encourage those who may not have already signed up to join the Patients Association as a member today.

Not sure if you’re an existing member of the Patients Association? If you have not previously completed our membership application form, it’s unlikely you’re an existing member, and you therefore won’t be receiving the additional benefits of membership including our quarterly members’ newsletter and information about events, including our Annual General Meeting. Don’t worry, though – you can still complete our survey and share your thoughts – we’d like to hear from everyone about how the NHS can improve. However, in order to have your views published as part of our results you need to be an existing member. It’s entirely free to join and takes just a few minutes to complete the form.

If you’re not sure whether you’re currently a member and would like us to check our records, email membership@patients-association.com.

If you have any questions about the survey, email Shivani Shah, Head of Programmes and Community & Patient Engagement Manager on shivani.shah@patients-association.com.

Latest consultation responses

We regularly respond to consultations by government and others on key decisions, and this week we completed two such submissions.

The first was a follow-up to last year’s consultation on ‘presumed consent’, opt-out organ donation. The Government proposed to exempt experimental and innovative transplants from the scheme, and only include operations that are now well-established and routine. We have supported the proposals.

The second consultation was from the General Medical Council, about proposed new guidance for doctors on how they use patient feedback in their regular revalidation process. We welcomed the GMC’s broad approach, and urged it to go further in advising doctors on how to get the most useful feedback from patients, including using unsolicited feedback and coproducing feedback mechanisms with patients.

Help shape our new programme of work

If you'd like to shape our forthcoming programme of work on patient experience, you still have the chance to have your say at the very earliest stage. Our brief survey is still live, and the results will guide our larger-scale work later this year.

We want to know about your experience of being a patient – this includes your thoughts on the care that you, or someone close to you, has recently experienced, and anything else that has mattered to you while you (or they) have needed care.

The survey asks you to think about a period when you needed health or social care, either currently or in the past, so please only begin the questionnaire if you are happy to think about those experiences.

If you have any questions about this piece of work or would like more information, email policy@patients-association.com.

Take part

Knee problems? Join us to create new guidance to inform and empower patients

We’ve partnered with Oxford University to produce new patient information about the recommended treatment options for meniscal problems of the knee, and we’d like to hear from you if you currently have knee problems and are considering surgery, are waiting for a procedure or have recently had an operation.

We want to recruit a diverse group of patients to pilot a new approach to creating guidance that will inform and empower patients. Structured clinical guidance is central to the delivery of care in the NHS, and it is crucial that this guidance is developed with meaningful involvement from patients and the latest, best quality evidence.

As well as working with Oxford University, the project is also supported by the NHS Getting It Right First Time programme and the British Association for Surgery of the Knee. Participants will need to be able to attend a meeting in Oxford on Friday 6 September from 10.30am to 3pm. Travel expenses will be reimbursed. If you are interested in taking part please contact Heather Eardley on heather.eardley@patients-association.com.

NHS drops ‘Friends and Family’ test

NHS England has announced plans to replace the controversial ‘friends and family’ test. Under the test, patients are asked whether they would recommend the care they have received to their friends or family, but under new plans they will be asked a more direct question about how they would rate their care. The regulator has published details of a ‘development project’ that it conducted to develop the new test, but has not issued the findings of its research about how effective the old test was, or how it devised the new test.

Rachel Power, Chief Executive of the Patients Association, said: “This change essentially seems to abandon the original ‘friends and family’ concept in favour of a general feedback questionnaire. If so, NHS England would seem to have declared the Friends and Family Test a failure – which may or may not be fair, but they should be publishing their evidence for that in some detail. Could this be a missed opportunity to introduce a substantially different mechanism for getting essential patient feedback into the NHS? Might the NHS do better to concentrate its efforts on capturing spontaneous, un-prompted feedback, in moments when patients are genuinely grateful, or genuinely upset? With so little information on the rationale for this change, it’s hard to say.

“We would also like to see more detail on how the feedback will be used to improve services, which is the crucial thing, and which NHS England’s letter refers to only briefly.

“Giving patients more time to offer their feedback is probably a sensible change, particularly for maternity and A&E patients for instance.”

About Us

Our vision is that health and social care will be delivered in a way that meets every person’s health and social care needs.

Our mission is to give effect to the patient voice, to improve patient experience and support people to engage fully in their own care. Find out more about our values on our website.

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The Patients Association is a registered charity in England and Wales (1006733). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (02620761)
Registered address: P Block, Northwick Park Hospital, The North West Hospitals NHS Trust, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 3YJ